Iceland! (Which Is Conventiently Lacking In Ice)

Iceland is approximately three hours north of London. I say three hours because that’s how long the Iceland Express flight was. It also has a population around 300,000 people. IN THE WHOLE COUNTRY. So that means that Melbourne has a population twenty times bigger than Iceland. It has the same population as Canberra. Are you getting that I’m excited about the size of this country?

Partially this is because it is 60% (I swear I’m not making up these statistics) uninhabitable. Which makes it a rad place to hire a car. Which we did. It made it supremely easy to get out of Reykavik and see the country. Iceland is called the ‘land of fire and ice’ as it’s surrounded by volcanoes and snow. This makes the land largely populated by hot springs, where geothermic heated water comes up from the ground below - sometimes up to boiling point. While we were on a tour the guide told us not to touch this water. So we touched the water.

It was boiling hot.

For the rest of the trip we lazed about in a spa. Iceland is well known for its swimming pools (which you had to, by custom, shower naked at - which was uncomfortable but informative!) and they are all heated from the geothermal water that somehow magically makes it way to the pools, and it’s a pretty bizarre experience. A lot of sulfur, and a lot of nearly falling asleep in the amazing water. The main one, or at least the best known, is the Blue Lagoon.

And funnily enough, it really was like that. The pools are surrounded by mountainous volcanic rock, that makes it all feel quite surreal. The minerals make the water light blue, and the mud is white. It was a pretty rad experience. In fact, all of Iceland was. It was a place I’ve wanted to visit since I was little, and it didn’t let me down. It was indie chic, well-dressed, super nordic, volcanic, beautiful, desolate and extreme, but also comforting. It was unlike any place I’ve been before, and the pictures don’t really do it justice.

Getting a hire car was the bestest decision ever. We just started driving, using a GPS thingy, and generally lost ourselves in the countryside. So now I have way too many photos of the car off in the distance. The landscape was so barren, and expansive, and neverending. The moss is all soft, and springy, and you could technically sleep on it, even though the winds were so hard here my face nearly froze. It reminded me of the Australian outback in that way, barren but beautiful.

At one of the stops there was a staircase into a big underground cave. I didn’t see any signs, just a cave. So, obviously, I ran down into it. One minute after this photo was taken my foot sank about a meter into that snow, and I had a panic attack because I’ve clearly seen too many scary movies. It was so much fun to just explore the countryside at our leisure.

Finally, the rift between worlds. Apparently Iceland is being torn in half, two centimetres a year. It’s the point where the tectonic plates of Northern America and Europe meet, and they moving away from one another. Imagine panicking… but really really slowly. So Ian and I spent twenty minutes jumping from one side to the other yelling ‘American!’, ‘European!’, ‘American!’, ‘European!’

It was kind of lame of us.

So, Iceland, an absurdly expensive (about $16AUS for a beer), incredibly pretty, endlessly fascinating and the culmination of five years of listening to Sigur Ros.

Next weekend, Brussels in Belgium! When will the adventures end!? When will my pay come through!? Stay tuned for the thrilling conclusion.